I’m not just mad at him. I’m mad at myself. I let Leo protect me, I keep letting him do it, and now I feel like the world is falling out from underneath me. That’s ridiculous. I should be able to stand on my own two feet. It’s cowardice, what I’m doing.
And I hate it. I hate being treated like a child who has to be kept away from everything scary in the world.
It’s too late for that anyway.
Eva: I’ll text you in the morning, ok?
Daphne: OK
“Texting?” My mother frowns at me from her seat.
“No.” I put my phone back in my pocket. “Thinking about my next painting.”
When dinner is over, one of Leo’s drivers is waiting at the front door. Thomas, his name is. “Any stops on the way home?”
“No. Thanks.”
This SUV is different from the one Leo normally drives to dinner. This one is armored, which makes me want to throw up even more. It seems like the kind of thing he’d send in the event he died. More security, because if my brother actually died, I think there might be chaos. Maybe a real war between the families. Who knows. Anything could happen. I stare out the window all the way back to the city.
Thomas pulls to a stop in front of Motif and gets out to open my door. “I’ll walk you up.”
“I’m good,” I tell him. “You can go.”
He shakes his head. “I have orders to walk you up.”
Another wash of uneasiness and anger, followed by sheer worry. I stick my key into the alley door and go in ahead of him. He stops me with a hand on my arm and insists on going up the stairs first. The armored car is one thing, but this? I want to pull the pillow over my head and wish for morning.
We stop on the doormat. “I could do a sweep of the apartment,” Thomas offers, and I can tell he’s technically been ordered to do a sweep of the apartment.
I roll my eyes. “That won’t be necessary.” I unlock the door with a flourish and step into the dark. “See? I’m home safe. You did your job. Good to go.”
He glances behind me. I never leave lights on when I leave, so there’s nothing to see but shadows. “Have a good night, Daphne.”
“You too.” When I flip the lock on the door, I make it as loud as possible. Hopefully Thomas hears. I’m safe behind a locked door, and nothing can happen to me. I won’t be there for my brother because I must be sheltered. I’ll be safe. That’s what. Nothing but safe.
I step out of my heels, shrug off my coat, and pad into the kitchen. Dump my purse on the countertop. I need some water. Unshed tears sting my eyes. The taste of tomato soup won’t get out of my mouth. I fill up the glass in the dark. Leo is allowed to be worried, and he’s allowed to do something about it. I have to sit around and wait for Eva to tell me what’s happening. It’s not fair. And I know, I know. Life isn’t fair. But I can be pissed about it in my own kitchen when I’m alone. Heartsick about it.
The water’s not very cold, run from the tap, and it sloshes against the cup when I turn around.
Something’s in the living room.
My heart jumps up into my throat. A person? No. It’s square, and too short, like—Jesus, Daphne. I fumble for a light switch and turn on the light.
Like a painting.
Oh my god.
I creep closer like something might jump out from behind it, but nothing does. It’s an expensive frame and an even more expensive painting.
The Lehmann piece I mentioned at the beach.
I would know this painting anywhere, and not because I want to—because it’s famous. There are millions of postcards of this painting. Posters for people to hang in college dorms. Prints are sold everywhere.
This is the painting itself. This is the original. It’s worth at least a million dollars. Maybe more.
It was worth that much.
Someone has painted a giant X across the canvas in black spray paint.
I always thought this piece was garbage, as much as the man who painted it. Now it’s worthless trash.
Chapter Eleven
Emerson
For a few days, I leave her be.
I don’t go to the city to watch her apartment. I don’t call the gallery to find out if she has any new pieces. I don’t send a man in the city to follow her family members.
Nothing.
I treated the sale of her paintings like a normal acquisition, and I have not pressed for more.
I stay away.
I do it to prove to myself that I can, but also to be strategic in the process of acquiring her. Scaring her off by moving in too fast will fuck the whole thing, so I don’t. It’s as painful as surfing in the frigid ocean. I’m out there every day in the salt and waves, my bones like ice. My hands take hours to warm up afterward. No one can say I haven’t been out in the world. Fuck the snow and the breath-stealing cold. Wave after wave after wave.
Her apartment was like her. It was small and sweet and she chose every piece of it. The knitted blanket on the back of the sofa. A bright blue teacup in the sink. Something you’d buy at a craft show. Pottery, not china, but the shape of it was perfect. I can see it cradled in her hands. I can see her laughing as she tries to take a sip from it. Her cheeks going pink with joy.
Daphne’s bed.
She makes it in a haphazard way, the blankets pulled up but not smoothed. Daphne paints in her bedroom. It’s all very quaint, for a Morelli. Her family has enough money to buy her a private studio, and she paints where she sleeps, her easel by the windows. Her paints wait in a case on the cushion of a window seat. An arched doorway leads back to the living room. No door to lock. Strange that she can sleep out in the open like that. A light burned outside her apartment while I was inside, cutting her front door from the frame.
I want so much to see it in daylight. But then—it’s not really the apartment I want to see. It’s her.
I push that feeling away. Deny it food. It won’t shut up. I can ignore it for days at a time, but it’s always there, howling. It’s not enough that I have a plan in place. Not enough that I’m working toward getting her. One night I surf out past the point it’s safe and roll off the board into open ocean. I can’t drown the feelings, can’t freeze them, can’t keep them locked away.
I need to have her.
On the way back to shore, I do the more difficult task of letting the feelings become more than static images. More than framed prints. Not so much that I can’t control them. Enough to stop my heart from pounding. It’s awful. Being at the mercy of emotion is enough to make a person sick. To make them vulnerable. I can’t have that.
The rest of the night is strange. Half of it I lie awake, watching the moonlight on the ocean, trying to wrestle those feelings back into frames. I try to hang them at even intervals on a blank gallery wall. When I do fall asleep, it’s straight into dreams. Her face. Her mouth on mine.
“Hummingbird,” I tell her in the dream.
“Yes,” she says, and it’s like she understands, but that would be impossible. A person like her could never. Fragments of light from behind a door.
“Don’t look.”
She doesn’t answer. She is looking at me.
In the morning I call my brother from the car. All the naked tree branches have frosted. A thin layer of glass, wrapped around every twist in the wood. It seems impossible that buds will ever form again. I dial his number even though it’s early.